Thanks for sharing this, Roger.

Roger, that must have been awful, and I can just imagine your feelings. The interface between personal and public is not a comfortable place to be wedged, and you have my sympathy.

Emma

Poor Roger - just shows the appalling lack of sense of humour or regard for truthfulness in publishers today! I'm happy I'm z-list enough for people not to get uptight about my blog's honesty about publishing! People certainly seem to appreciate it.

A
xxx

Anne, I only think I got on the radar because of the Macmillan New Writing controversy. Nicholas Clee was looking to stick the knife in. He came to my blog via the Grumpy Old Bookman and spun the non-story to turn it into a story. It was my first taste of being written about in a national newspaper. I suppose if you believe that there's no such thing as bad publicity then I should have been happy.

Nothing like a nice bit of controversy to stir the blood indeed, Roger!

)

A
xxx

Glad things with your blog worked out, Roger - I think what that story shows is that if you're not going to blog anonymously, it really does pay to remember that it's a very public thing, despite the inherent intimacy of the medium. I think good blogging is a little bit like good fiction; character is important. For some bloggers, their own character works very well; for others, it;s necessary to kind of construct a public/blogging character.

On the plus side, as others have mentioned in this thread, the communication with others is great; seeing people pick up and respond to what you say with comments and other blog posts is really nice. And the reach a blog has, even an unsuccessful one like mine, is amazing - when I look at the stats page, even though there's only a handful of people coming to the site, they do come from all over the world.